The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

I'm sure some of you will know this car. It's been listed on eBay a couple of times, I picked it up yesterday from York and brought it back up to Dundee and had a look at it today.



It's a 1973 Sprint number VA488, Reg.No. OFP 309M and has just over 50,000 miles on the clock. I took a leap of faith and bought the car after talking to the owner on the phone, he said it was reasonably solid last time he looked but it did have some corrosion on the boot floor and outer sills. He was right but it's not as bad as I was expecting. The boot floor is only holed at one side (at the moment) and the drivers sill is holed along the underside at the front. There are a couple of smaller holes at the rear inner wheel arches and passengers rear sill. All in all pretty good.





It came with all parts needed to complete with quite a few extras including a spare set of wheels and glass and full exhaust. It also has some 'fancy' suspension.



The rest of the car is in excellent condition, the floors, inner sills etc have so signs of any corrosion, the engine is just sitting on it's mountings just now but was capable of running when it was removed.

I don't have any concrete plans for it just now. I'll concentrate on the obvious things, welding and rebuilding and see how it goes.

Welcome to the forum.

Looking forward to seeing this project progress.

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Interesting that 488 is on an M plate whereas my 803 is on an L plate.

According to the guy I bought the car from it was laid aside after it was built for some reason. It would explain the 'M' registration.

I had wee look at the engine yesterday, it was really tight to turn by hand and then gave a clunk as it freed off. Now it turns over with no friction at all, looks like I have compression problems.

Hi sandy, glad to see you took my advice on jumping on board the forum.it's a great place for all things dolly.i noticed you mentioned the engine been tight, with the obvious oil down the bores overnight etc!!any work relating to 488's engine was limited to removal and also inspection of the engine number by means of inlet manifold/carb removal.that's the sum total of any meddling on the engine side so it's rather perplexing to hear there's no compression!

Welcome to the forum. Good to know that there is another Dolomite in Scotland. Hopefully I will see you at an event in the future.

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Well explained there mike...

I wonder if they drove them into the car park then removed them from the front, i.e. Last in, First out (or LIFO for any accountants amongst us).

Made a start to welding the boot floor today.

It's still coming along. First of all I apologise for the poor quality pictures. There isn't alot of natural light in this small section of workshop and my camera can't cope.

I've finished welding sections into both of the rear wheel arches.





I took a break from the welding and decided to see if I could get some compression in the engine when disaster struck. A cap on one of the spark plugs wasnt screwed on properly and fell into a cylinder, locking up the engine. It took alot of time and thought but I finally managed to hoover it out in a tube.



I was worried that the cylinder head would have to come off so am very pleased it came out!

I have also stripped the remaining parts from under the bonnet



and welded a couple of small patches into the nose (they gray bits).



I know I have more welding to do on the o/s front sill and a small weld on the bulkhead and that may well be the welding finished. I know I need ball joint covers and brake caliper rubbers too.

OK, so my son and my very much younger (and better looking) brother have been doing all of the updates on this thread, and until I can master the art of the internet forum, you may see the occasional piece of fun being poked at me!

Hopefully there follows a bunch of photo's, no real text or explanation with most of them, the last image is where the car is at now. Basically it is ready for rebuild. Thede engine has been done, the gearbox is unknown, everything is ready to be installed and tested.